- Joined
- Jul 8, 2012
- Messages
- 49
- Points
- 0
So awhile back I was on here and picked up a 2w blue lazer from lazeerer (or is it lazereer?). It was very nice and I was very satisfied with it, until I mistakenly handed it to a friend. He put in two half-sized batteries thinking it would be twice as bright and turned it on before I realized what was going on and, of course, it instantly burned out xD So I moved on and was looking around at other lasers, picked up a small green unknown power one on amazon and was messing with fog machines, glycerin, mirrors, all sorts of things.
In the end, though, despite the nice fun of a cool 2 (or even 3) axis light show, my favorite thing to do was a simple liquid sky effect. Since I didn't have any diffraction gratings, but I had all the parts of a laser printer/copier, it was easiest to just use a hexagonal mirror mounted on a motor that was constantly spinning to create a scanline, then shine this through puffs of fog.
However, I've recently been working on lights stuff again and kinda had an idea in my head. What if you could create a small slide-on attachment for just about any small pocket laser that would instantly turn it into a compact liquid-sky effect that you could stick on the wall or in the corner to turn your ceiling into a liquid sky?
In my experience one ideal way to position lasers is above eye level, shining upward/out, as this keeps it away from everyone's face. So I thought, what if you stuck a laser pointer into the corner between two walls, with the beam pointing straight up at the ceiling, and then used a 45° mirror to bounce it out parallel to the ceiling, and a diffraction grating to spread it out!
Using the 45° mirror would let the laser pointer stay upright, thus making it compact and easy to hang off a thumb tack or something similar, sorta like the projector/mirror combo in this, but pointing up instead of down.
So yeah, just a kinda late-night ramble of something I might work on someday. I'd need to head to the hardware store and pick up a few inches of PVC or something to hold the parts, and I need a diffraction grating; I've got a disco ball already, so I'm set for mirrors for life ;P
In the end, though, despite the nice fun of a cool 2 (or even 3) axis light show, my favorite thing to do was a simple liquid sky effect. Since I didn't have any diffraction gratings, but I had all the parts of a laser printer/copier, it was easiest to just use a hexagonal mirror mounted on a motor that was constantly spinning to create a scanline, then shine this through puffs of fog.
However, I've recently been working on lights stuff again and kinda had an idea in my head. What if you could create a small slide-on attachment for just about any small pocket laser that would instantly turn it into a compact liquid-sky effect that you could stick on the wall or in the corner to turn your ceiling into a liquid sky?
In my experience one ideal way to position lasers is above eye level, shining upward/out, as this keeps it away from everyone's face. So I thought, what if you stuck a laser pointer into the corner between two walls, with the beam pointing straight up at the ceiling, and then used a 45° mirror to bounce it out parallel to the ceiling, and a diffraction grating to spread it out!
Using the 45° mirror would let the laser pointer stay upright, thus making it compact and easy to hang off a thumb tack or something similar, sorta like the projector/mirror combo in this, but pointing up instead of down.
So yeah, just a kinda late-night ramble of something I might work on someday. I'd need to head to the hardware store and pick up a few inches of PVC or something to hold the parts, and I need a diffraction grating; I've got a disco ball already, so I'm set for mirrors for life ;P